Now Peruse

Worst Substitute Ever

I was a substitute elementary school gym teacher this morning, and, well, I don’t know why, but I let a stray dog into the school.

It was a nice looking mid-sized dog, all business. It knew what it wanted and it went straight for it. Who was I to get in its way? I was leading twenty odd children outside to play jump rope, and along comes this dog (or should I say “Mr. Dog”? Did I mention it was a very distinguished looking dog?) with its friend, Not-So-Distinguished-Looking-Dog. So, I let Mr. Dog in, and in he pranced, right past all the children’s big wandering eyes, and then something clicked in my mind- (That’s a freakin’ dog!)- and I didn’t let its friend in. Then all the children were outside, running in circles, playing with the dog I didn’t let in, and I was trying to figure out if I should maybe actually try to tell someone that I let a dog in the school. (The substitute handbook is sadly silent on this issue, mind you.) Then I saw a man, let’s call him “Mr. Janitor”. (Did I mention he was a very distinguished looking janitor?)

Me: “Hey! Uh, I think there’s a dog running around inside the school.”Mr. Janitor: “A dog? Are you kidding?”Me: “No, no. I’m not kidding. There’s a dog inside the school. It just walked in. There’s another one out here, too.”Mr. Janitor: “Oh, uh. Okay. I’ll, um...”

And he was gone, thank goodness. I’m so glad he didn’t say, “Why the %$#@ did you let a dog into the school?”

The other dog went off somewhere.

I tried to act all authoritative and professional and stuff. I had the kids sit in a big circle,

Me: “First I’m going to have you do some warm-ups, run some laps around the playground and... Wow! Can you believe there’s a dog running around inside your school?”

All the children then started talking about the dog inside the school.

Luckily, it was not rabid. It had tags, and a parent volunteer walked Mr. Dog and his friend home.